Accountant II

Job Category: Academic Staff | Employment Type: Regular | Job Profile: Accountant II

About the role

The Accountant II performs advanced accounting duties following generally accepted accounting principles and procedures. Audits and reviews payroll tax transactions in accordance with university, state, and federal tax regulations. Develops and maintains accounting policies and procedures to ensure the accurate recording and reporting of the system’s payroll transactions.

UW-Shared Services provides payroll, benefits, HR, business services, and reporting services to UW employees and universities. UW-Shared Services exists to standardize processes, consolidate operations, and streamline administrative practices to provide high-quality services while improving administrative efficiency and effectiveness. In addition to providing high-quality services, Service Operations brings value to UW institutions by reducing administrative burden and cost, thereby allowing them to invest time and resources into activities which are more central to their mission.

Payroll Administration: This functional team focuses on tasks related to Payroll domestic and foreign national tax areas. Tasks include, but are not limited to, validating tax payments are entered accurately and timely, validating and correcting tax application, working with foreign national employee data for accurate data alignment; auditing employee information with reporting for payroll tax compliance and accuracy; and performing other processes and interfaces to sync data between databases.

Responsibilities

• Organizes, prepares, and updates basic payroll financial statements, monthly and year-end adjustments, reports for various financial needs within an automated payroll system to ensure accurate recording and reporting of payroll wage and tax withholding transactions
• Prepares and analyzes payroll tax data, reports and records, identifies discrepancies, investigates, recommends, and implements basic solutions as needed
• Assists with accounting and reviewing reconciliations, tax payments, schedules, and reports
• Answers questions and provides accounting related information to internal and external stakeholders according to established policies and procedures
• Assists in preparing monthly, quarterly and annual tax liability reporting and reconciliation
• Reviews, prepares and audits taxable wage/withholding transactions and payments
• Develops and maintains automated financial systems, recommending controls to ensure system reliability and data integrity

Qualifications

Required:

• Associate’s degree in accounting, finance or related field of study OR 3+ years related professional work experience in tax preparation, compliance, audit, or tax resolution
• Ability to interpret policies, develop and maintain an accounting program in a complex environment
• Proficiency in identifying discrepancies, reconciling tax accounts, and diagnosing root causes
• Ability to communicate effectively, both orally and in writing, with various levels of employees
• Intermediate Excel skills

Preferred:

• Bachelor’s degree